October 9th

Today's the day, the day I start tutoring little children in English! But first I had class, bleh. Comparative literature isn't that bad, except that I have to read three books at once, super. Fortunately two of them are originally in English, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, the other, Les Lettres de Losuanne, is in simple enough French that I understand it pretty well. My teacher Mme Colin told me that I can read the books in English since it will obviously help my comprehension and make it easier to write my essays. Thus I downloaded the two English books onto my computer for free, ah I love you internet. In another class I am also reading the book in English, Lancelot the Knight of the cart, simply because I don't know old French, I don't even know old English, and the modern French translation is a little funky. Again the internet is a fantastic thing with free translations that can be easily copied and pasted in Word docs or saved as Pdf files. Thank you technology. After class, and a few useless hours trying to use the non-working library internet, I left for my teaching session. I was prepared to be lost, I always become lost, since I had not only step-by-step instructions written out, but also a drawn highlighter route on one of my Le Havre maps. I also had an umbrella, it is a necessity in a town that rains basically every day. Through the use of my map, mostly my map, and my gut intuition I found the house perfectly on time. The kids were adorable, well the little ones anyways. I'm not old enough to call a fifteen year old adorable, they're just teens to me. Anyhow the two little boys, Louis and Alexis, were like little dolls. Especially Alexis. He's a blond curly haired five year old who not only looks like the Little Prince, but is also shy. So cute! My job this time was to talk with Louis in English until his older sister Anne returned from school. Louis's English is pretty good considering he's only twelve. Anne's is somewhat subpar, I'm not sure why. When she arrived I helped her with understanding her homework, which happened to be all about regrets. She had to formulate sentences using "I wish I had" or "you shouldn't have", lovely hindsight conditionals. I do feel for the French in the whole expressing a "wish or desire" section. After all, they just use their subjunctive tense whereas in English, we tend to use the conditional since the subjunctive is no more! That has to be a pain, but I don't feel that bad for them. They stuck us Anglo-Saxons with gender articles, we gave them "the", "a/an", and "some". Anyways Anne did fine on her homework, but her pronunciation needs definite improving. It was cool being there. The mother Mme Racadot only spoke to me in French, as directed by Michel Hauchecorne. Thanks Mama Duck*. It is good for me though; I learned some new words, even an idiomatic phrase, and had some practice speaking French with native speakers. The best part about kids is that they will correct you and won't be awkward about it. Damn, I should've volunteered at a grade school or something as a teacher assistant or recess manager. Sadly the lessons are only for an hour, Alexis was really sad that I had to leave, but I will be back again the same time next week. I left, in the pouring rain of ropes** no less, and spoke with mother on the phone while on the way to the bus stop. After I made it home, dry I might add, I called my brother Pete for a good old fashioned Scale sibling chat. I'm not sure what that is exactly, but it usually includes video game discussion. It was a good day spent under the Le Havre rain.

*In the beginning, during the intensive courses, Kate and I would refer to M. Hauchecorne as "Mama Duck" since he would have to constantly stop and wait for us, the international students, to catch up with him whenever we were going anywhere as a group. Just like a mother duck does her oblivious ducklings.

**This is a pun, a poor one, that involves a French idiomatic expression. In English we say, "it's raining cats and dogs." In French they say,"il pleut des cords," which literally means "it's raining ropes." Great pun huh?